


La Esperanza Debida

by aromaalibro



Category: Monsters of Verity - Victoria Schwab
Genre: Alternate Ending, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Our Dark Duet Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2019-03-29 10:08:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13924908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aromaalibro/pseuds/aromaalibro
Summary: -or in which august runs like hell, leaving everything behind trying to save the only thing he is able to.





	La Esperanza Debida

**Author's Note:**

> Can we please have more monsters of verity fanfiction, yes?  
> Title comes from a song from the Spanish band "La Oreja de Van Gogh".  
> Very heavy spoilers for Our Dark Duet.
> 
> All characters, plot and world are propriety of the great Victoria Schwab.

when sloan’s body drops to the floor, bow coming out his back, a moment, a breath before his body crumbles to dust, august sees callum harker again.

he sees him in the monster he had created so long ago. it is harker’s shape the one he watches being undone. the texture of his hair, the cut from his clothes, and -to the sunai’s widening eyes, filled with horror- the lines of **her** face too. a distorted mirror still reflects, after all.

it is ilsa’s fighting the one who draws him back to reality. he feels, hears her attacking the shadow that was no longer, and august presses his lips together, stops the trembing of his hands and the ache that grew across his chest. his pale fingers clutch to the bow, which is covered with a trace of dust as the sole indicator of the kill.

the sunai smells the ashes too, but there is no room for pain or doubt during the fight. he simply lifts above his head the instrument -another beautiful thing corrupted and twisted for this world- and lets the sound of violence drag him.

the chaos eater opens his mouth to sing a song as he launches against him, and the melody makes him stop, powerless again. it gets inside his head, inside the same fabric of his body, and august tries to fight the darkness that arises as if summoned. it is not a beautiful song but it demands to be heard.

it certainly is more powerful than he is.

a scream tears from his throat. _please,_ he tries to say, every fiber of his body in agonizing pain while his tallies start igniting one by one. it is the warehouse again, he is burning, losing a piece of himself in the process.

(is this hell?)

**i must resist, resist resistresistplease-**

somewhere next to him, ilsa bends her knees, and away, soro raises their flute.

 

 

  
the world becomes blurry for the next minutes.

or maybe just his head does.

he struggles to remain conscious. everything around him spins, while in the background, a cacophony of voices rises.

no voice is the one that matters.

he is no longer falling, but has not yet recovered, spirals of darkness twirling around his figure. at last, he puts a hand on his left leg and tries to get on his feet but collapses. there is just so much his body is able to handle and these wounds go deeper than mere flesh.

a red light illuminates the entire floor, the walls and ilsa transforms into a magnific creature with giant, powerful wings. august is so taken aback by her, he forgets to register what is actually happening. her sister darkening, her sister embracing the chaos eater, it is the blink of an eye and both of them are gone, gone, gone.

 

 

  
maybe soro is the one calling. the frenetic battle has died with its maker, and yet he can’t hear a thing that is not silence.

or even more probable is that he does not want to. his arms had let go of his bow -another instrument of death- laying lifeless at his sides. august’s shoulders slump and he feels so pathetic, lost, tired and powerless, his head looking at the ground, strands of black curly hair getting into his eyes. his lower lip trembles and he thinks he might be sobbing. 

_is this what it means to be human? ~~losing.~~_

except-

he is too weak to get up and too sore to feel anything, so he does it anyways. the silver-haired monster finally comes into view, their elegant flute still playing soft soothing notes below their mouth. august doesn’t think twice as he starts running away, careless about what anyone might think, and caring about something that is happening far from him. he trips twice on thin air and twice over nameless warm corpses he doesn’t spare glances, before he is out of the compound.

his memory gives him sloan dying, who then turns into harker, harker who is suddenly **kate, his kate**  and he can’t take this any longer, pushing the pain away, oh how it hurts to be alive. to be human.

he might as well be running fueled by desperation alone.

there is no instrument on his hands, no weapon, just his sore bones and a jaw set on determination. there are no other monsters on his way as he crosses the seam. no monsters as he pushes any human body who opposes him. oh, no monsters but the one who half in madness passes block after block of the city and presses continuously the same button on what he swears is the slowest elevator in this whole world. he is not sure whether punching every inch of the metal box will help yet he takes a shot at it.

there are six holes on the metal when the doors open.

the beating of a lone human heart is all it takes for the pain to resurface.

 

 

  
she is already on the floor and he stumbles one last time, a man dying of thirst towards the last oasis on earth. kate’s gaze searches for him, recognizing the pattern of his steps the way he could tell a soul apart from all the others. he had always felt so fascinated by astronomy, it makes sense that the blue from the heavenly skies erases every whisper of fear that lingered on him.

“august” her voice is uncannily small yet he smiles like it is the most natural thing in the universe, there are no monsters in this moment, kneeling next to her and pressing his hands into wet, red-

august’s grey eyes widen in horror and the noise comes from him that is half scream, half sob makes kate’s face become contorted to a grim smile.

the sunai recognizes it, the same smile henry flynn makes each morning after a cough he fails to hide.

it shows how sorry he is. how unavoidable fate is. how helpless we all are.

“did we win?” kate is furrowing her eyebrows and moves her hands beneath his and beneath the pool of blood under, so that she is pressing her fists against her chest. a brief wince escapes her pale lips as she tries to sit straight.

something inside august snaps.

he stops her mid-motion, and kate doesn’t even try to simulate the surprise that opens her mouth and tenses her under his touch. a hand now engulfed in smoke. it grabs her as he rises, ignoring the sudden protests and weak curses thrown by the prideful human girl.

his voice turns into something hoarse at the start to honey sweet at the end, his form flickering between two.

_i will walk on darkness if it means that my others will see the light._

“not yet”.

 

 

  
august gasps, his human body threatening to give up entirely.

is in hearing the faint thud of kate’s heart, that he draws enough strength to give one step more. his head moves to the skies and mutters a silent prayer to anyone, god, monster, human to help him carry her. no one listens but leo’s laughter stains his heart with a burst of anger that lasts to move his feet once. he closes his eyes, and even though the sky is clear, water drops from his lashes down to his cheeks and onto kate.

she shivers and tries to open her eyes, but it is too difficult. staying awake is taking all her energy. or else she would have already told august to leave her. she feels another drop on her. try again.

august inhales and exhales once.

**thud.**

one more.

**thud.**

one more, come on. he knows this streets.

(what had kate said before? about finding something that keeps you going, that gives you strength?)

it is nothing but one block away.

it is everything, one block away.

going dark is not an option any longer. flickering between aspects was hard on normal circumstances, let alone almost dead. and it is just one block away.

august’s legs tremble and he calls for help at the top of his lungs, the last trick up his sleeve. his body crumbles over the pavement, he tries to take most of the hit and thinks he managed. kate’s much paler body stays across his chest. august’s body is soaked in red blood, red blood that should be under her skin not on his, and he is no medic like henry but a weight settles on him much greater than kate. it grips on his soul.

he screams again.

he does not hear anything.

“do… do they stay?” she asks, her voice is merely a wisp that would have passed for wind had they not been so close. he has always thought she had such a beautiful voice, rich in tones, melodic, powerful “the souls you reap, do they stay with you?”

he wishes he had a better answer, but he wishes for a lot of things:

“i don’t know”

he presses his head against the pavement. it is cold on his wet cheek and for a second, he thinks he feels something but he waits, eyes open, not daring himself to let the hope in this time.

“i want you to…” kate groans in pain as she tries to face him, but august is somewhere else, behind.

there, someone from the task force is coming and august screams for a doctor until all the air has been expulsed away from him. doctor bring any doctor bring the best doctor just come here i can’t lose her- he called for help again. one of her bare arms feels frozen underneath his long fingers, all her warmth on the street and on him like a painting. but they are coming, august can hear them.

“tell my father…” kate finally locks eyes with him and he would have started crying at that moment had his face not been soaked with tears already.

kate draws in a short breath, eyes gleaming.

“tell that son of a bitch i survived”

 

 

  
it is five days later and he has gone only once out of her room.

came back with his violin, damaged but not broken, and august has been sitting in the same spot in a corner ever since then, his violin pressed tightly against his body. in a couple of days he would need to feed but until then, he sits.

august had told henry to save her, and a nod from henry was all it took for all the best doctors and surgeons available to gather around a harker and heal her. the sunai stayed, even when his father suggested he could sleep outside, that she would be alright.

he had stared at him for a moment, the dizziness and exhaustion drawn on the bags under his eyes and his inability to stand on his feet for more than two seconds.

the first night, august slept on the floor. when kate did not wake up on the next day, he slept there again, and if someone found this behavior unusual on a monster they did not speak a thing.

and so went the third and fourth nights.

sometimes he dared to tear his sight away from his books (like when he started reading the same line for several times without any kind of concentration) and took a peak at her. he watched her cheeks go from a deathly white to something akin to pink. it brought him a confort that could only be felt, not described.

being away from the rest of the task force and the people also had an unexpected advantage: he mourned ilsa. he cried her death with a song.

august had been thinking of his sister and his mouth started moving almost automatically. his songs were not infused with his violin’s power, but it was undeniable they contained some kind of magic. when august sang the melodies of his head, he felt better. the horrible emptiness on his chest, the dampness of his senses… they did not disappear. but it helped in coping with it.

it is five days later, and august hums quietly as he passes onto the next page of his cosmology text. _when a star explodes_  he reads _the elements that had formed inside the star are released to the rest of the galaxy. then from these materials everything else is made_ , august hums slightly louder and a soft curve grazes the edge of his lips. humans and monsters, all made from stardust. 

what a nice thought.

the sunai’s gray eyes slip from edges of the pages and land in the human who is not sleeping, but looking at him between half-closed eyelids. her expression confused, weak but alive. so very alive.

and the book slips from his grip as he says her name.

 

 

  
“seems like someone needs to rebuild verity, don’t you think, flynn?”  
“i could use some help, harker”

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry, but this is the only ending that my soul is able to bear. After how much I've come to care for these wonderful characters, specially Kate and August, I just couldn't let them suffer this much.
> 
> Might become a multi-fic or part of a series. Don't know yet.
> 
> Kudos will be greatly appreciated! (even if i have not written anything in like, ages and it shows)


End file.
